“I felt moved and buoyed by the idea that I could write something that didn’t exist, and that there’s a little girl right now still living on the short end of the street in New Orleans East where I grew up. And I wrote it for her, so that there could be some history already in existence. And, you know, one of the striking things about New Orleans East is the way in which it doesn’t always appear on a map of New Orleans. So I wanted to quite literally put New Orleans East on the map.” – PBS NewsHour